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The Home Office and local authorities have been urged to improve data and partnership working to tackle violent crime. A strongly-worded report by the public accounts committee called on the police and councils to gain a better understanding as to why youths join gangs, and how they can be diverted from membership. The report follows a wave of recent, high-profile cases of violent crime involving young people. Committee chairman, Edward Leigh, claimed the Home Office had been slow to collect data and spread good practice. He also highlighted the lack of resources among local crime and disorder partnerships to analyse the information available on crime and offenders. Home Office cash to tackle violent crime was usually short term, and the committee warned it resulted in ‘expenditure being targeted at the consequences of violence, and not its causes'. The report will come as a fresh blow to the Home Office, which has been rated poorly for its performance compared with other Whitehall departments. Part of the department was damned by former home secretary, John Reid, as ‘not fit for purpose', and its legal remit was later given to the new Department for Justice. Officials were also forced to admit last week that crime figures had been under-recorded. Mr Leigh said: ‘This whole subject of violent crime is bedevilled by a continuing lack of reliable data on the effectiveness of interventions. ‘A large number of partnerships have never used information available from the ambulance service and A&E units, two groups which are no strangers to violent crime.' He added: ‘Where partnerships succeed in collecting information on violent crime in their area, they lack the resources to analyse it.

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WHITEHALL

More data needed to beat violence

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